Here's an unedited bit about the Indonesian elections that Al-Jazeera ran pretty much 'as is'.
Tomorrow? "Converting To Islam For Dummies"

Jakarta, Indonesia
There’s still thirty minutes before the polls in Jakarta open and the men wearing the orange vests of Indonesia’s national election commission have struck just the right absurdist chord.
Blaring from massive concert speakers beneath a polling station tent in a quiet, working-class neighborhood is a recording of one-hit-wonder Ray Parkey Jr. banging out the catchy opening lyrics of a twenty-year-old best seller:
“There's something weird,
In the neighborhood,
Who're you gonna call?
Ghostbusters!”
It was not the sort of wake-up call Indonesians normally associate with election day, the so-called “dawn raids” by candidates who swap bags of rice, packaged noodles and hard currency for votes. Then again, with reputable pollsters reporting up to one-third of the country’s eligible voters undecided a week before the elections, there may be plenty of surprises in store as results roll in from what has been billed as the most daunting logistical exercise in the recent history of democracy.
An estimated 147 million Indonesians are eligible to punch ballots for the 550-seat national parliament (DPR), local and provincial legislatures in this first round of a reformed electoral process. The country’s first direct presidential elections follow in July.
The month-long election campaign culminated with massive rallies of paid participants in party colors. Motorcycle taxi drivers and housewives publicly advertised their willingness to participate in exchange for the equivalent of $6 US, lunch and a new party T-shirt. Candidates offered platitudes not platforms, and a cynical electorate brooded that their votes for reform five years ago had fallen on deaf ears.
And yet, early results suggest that not only couldl projections of a 90 per cent-plus turnout be reached, but an interesting reworking of the political landscape is taking place in 600,000 polling stations in the world’s third most populous democracy.
A carnival-like atmosphere pervaded the backstreets of Tanah Abang, a poor, melting-pot neighborhood anchored by what was once Asia’s largest textile market. Streets normally clogged with vehicles became impromptu playgrounds for swarms of children on rattletrap bicycles and lounging parents who pretended to ignore their appeals for cherry-flavored popsicles.
“I made up my mind (who to vote for) after talking with my friends this morning,” said Antonius Utomo, a 37-year-old tax consultant from South Sumatra. “I know there is very little chance my vote will change the way the candidates behave because they are all corrupt. But with help we will have a good democracy in Indonesia by the time my daughter is old enough to vote. I also hope it will be more simple for her.”
It is an oft-repeated complaint at polling stations across the sprawling capitol. Some voters were clearly confounded by the daunting stack of up to four ballot sheets, each the size of an unfolded broadsheet newspaper, covered with the names, photographs and party affiliation of each of the hundreds of candidates from two dozen parties.
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do,” says housewife Li Pao Liem, pacing nervously beside a rotting pile of garbage near a polling station in a shanty neighborhood in East Jakarta that disappears beneath the polluted waters of the Ciliwung River every February. “There was no information before today... no socialization of the process and anyone can see it is very complicated.”
With so many undecided voters grappling with a complicated ballot it is difficult to predict with any accuracy what the new legislature will look like. Organizers say it will take up to 30 days before all the results are in.
But informal polling conducted at sites around the city, and the initial flow of results from around Indonesia painted a grim picture for president Megawati Sukarnoputri and her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), and surprising gains by a several rivals.
PDI-P took over a third of the popular vote in the last elections in 1999, the highest of any of the 48 parties on the ballot, largely on the basis of her personal popularity, and disgust with Golkar, the rubber-stamp party of 32-year strongman Suharto. Cashing in on its vast network of life-long cadres Golkar still managed to pick up 22.5 percent of the vote.
What a difference five years makes. Reputable pollsters have said that PDI-P was in trouble for several weeks, polling as low as 12 per cent, compared to Golkar’s roughly 20 per cent. And Megawati’s personal popularity has similarly slumped: she now trails her former chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as the top presidential candidate.
His tiny Democratic Party (PD) is polling well in many regions of the country.
In what can only be described as a highly symbolic slap in the face, returns from polling station 001, where the president cast her ballot Monday morning, showed PDI-P running a distant third behind PDI and a nominal Christian party.
Despite her near mythical credentials as a reformer, the daughter of the founding president Sukarno has proven herself to be an ineffective and distant ruler. Like Abdurrahman Wahid, the Sufi cleric whom she served as vice-president from 1999 until his impeachment in 2001, Megawati has squandered bushels of goodwill, both domestically and abroad.
Despite some modest strides in repairing the tattered economy, her coalition government has largely failed to tackle issues near and dear to people’s hearts, in particular the lack of jobs and the woeful state of the education and health systems in Indonesia. Her well established ties to an oppressive military apparatus and the failure of the attorney general’s office to prosecute most of the nation’s worst corporate debtors has alienated her from the young activist set credited with forcing Suharto from power in 1998.
“I was one of the people who organized the big rallies for Mega (as she is known colloquially) in 1999. I painted my face and wore her colors, red and black,” said 26-year-old Deny Purnawan, a diehard “Slanker”, the nickname for followers of a popular Indonesian hardcore band. “But what has she done? All the talk, talk, talk about Reformasi and I still don’t have a job. We knew it was going to take time to change this country but it is obvious that she has sold us to the same corruptors we fought against.”
Another intriguing ingredient in Indonesia’s complicated political pie are the apparent gains being made by the Prosperous Justice Party, headed by Saudi-educated Hidayat Nurwahid. Running on an anti-corruption ticket, Nurwahid and his band of intellectual urban Islamists have carved out a soft spot in the public consciousness though an informal good-works policy in poor kampungs, or areas struck by natural disasters that predates by years the actual election campaign.
“We’ve seen that the mainstream political parties are unable to beat corruption so even though I am worried that they could become very strict with God’s help they’ll beat corruption here in Indonesia,” said Firdaus Nursalim, a father of five who works for a local government agency. “Maybe they can apply moral pressure. However, I would still like to see SBY (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) as president. I think he is a true reformer.”
Not everyone is making such bold decisions though. In some parts of the country, ghosts still run the show.
A heavily made-up dowager arrives at a high school polling station in the toney Menteng district of Jakarta in a late-model, midnight blue Mercedes-Benz.
“I will vote for Mega's sister Rakmawati because we prospered under her father,” she says, as several men in orange vests scurry to process her voting credentials. “He was a good man.”